I can work on/repair basically anything old. Things from a certain period and back just make sense, plain and simple.

I can shave with a straight razor, operate an oil lamp (and I have several throughout my house,) hell, I’m a musician, and I recorded on tape until 2014, using clunky, old multitrack tape machines, which I can also repair and maintain. (I still dream of getting ahold of an 8-track reel machine, a Tascam 80-8 or especially a 388. They are stupid expensive if you can find a working one at all.)

I got ahold of a big box of Canadian candy recently, gave some to my (very Republican) mom. She was amazed how much better it is, and how much shorter the ingredient list is. The chocolate itself isn’t like candle wax. (She had also never had a Coffee Crisp before, poor thing.)

Yeah; they don’t let companies use car antifreeze as a preservative! (Fireball whiskey is banned pretty much everywhere except the USA for this reason. The preservative is literally antifreeze.)

Swear to fuck, we could dramatically improve national health in a few months if we’d shut our mouths and open our eyes. Oh, and every single thing on our store shelves? Replace it with the Euro version; they have all the same stuff we do, it’s just vastly better made.

I’m a pro musician. I was in a big rock band in the mid 2010s, and we were doing all kinds of cool shit. It imploded over stuff that didn’t really involve me, but following that, I went into a serious drunk-depression that lasted years and almost killed me.

I cleaned up, going on two years sober, have a new band together, and are about to open ourselves up to the world and start booking shows. It’ll be my first shows completely sober since like 2012. It’s terrifying, but I’m excited as hell.

Punk rock music has fallen by the wayside. Time to try and bring it back to life. 🤘

I feel that. I actually was just lamenting that a minute ago, looking at the bottom of my Zippo lighter, which says “1941 Replica.”

“Man, imagine living in a time when nobody thought smoking was bad for you…” - my brain

Imagine living in 1902, when you could just go to the store and buy cocaine and heroin for your toothache.

Hell, listening to the fun our parents had growing up. It shouldn’t be punishable by years in prison to shoot off some fireworks at a party. (I live in OH, our fireworks laws are brutal. Us and Utah, man.)

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with lamenting that the past is gone. Yes, there were bad things we’re better off without, but we lost and gave up a lot, too. Missing those things isn’t wrong.

Do grits count? Grits with as close to an entire stick of hot butter as someone will let me have.

Private security here! Spent eight years as a guard before moving up to corporate level.

I think about this daily. How an armed guard could get not only fired, but potentially blacklisted from the entire industry (at least locally) for pulling their gun at the “wrong” time. If I were on duty and shot a journalist with a rubber bullet on fucking TV….its just inconceivable. If I were a manager and got a call that one of my guards did this, I can’t even imagine, I’d have to Japanese-train-conductor myself live on the 5pm news after reading a 20 page apology. There aren’t responses strong enough in my repertoire for something like that.

Cops just do it and saunter on to their next abomination.

Like it or not, private security have ten times the liability, accountability, damn near any metric you wanna use, that police do. We get fired (or removed from contracts at client request) for tiny shit daily. A guard being caught burping by a dickish client manager could lose a contract worth millions and dozens of people their jobs.

There are enough bad apples in our industry that I can’t really argue against the leeriness, ridicule, etc, from the public. I get it; there are a lot of IRL Paul Blarts out there. It means the industry needs to raise standards…meh, I’m getting off topic here.

You’re entirely correct, and I’m glad to see this pointed out. Police get away with shit that would get any guard super-extra-mecha fired, whether it’s a highly trained armed guard working a federal contract or an unarmed kid making $9 an hour to sit in an empty parking lot.

From both sides of the fence, this is not how this should be working.

I don’t think so, BUT the usefulness of it will vary depending on where you live and work.

I took five years of Spanish in school, last three were honors and I got college credit for them.

I kept it up on my own, but in my area, mostly useless. Hilariously, I’ve gotta be the one person who who’ve benefitted more from taking all that time to instead learn French; there aren’t a ton of Hispanic immigrants in my area. What there are…a lot of Africans, many of whom speak at least a version of French. (They’re from places like the DR Congo that are former French colonies. Fun fact: a small few elderly Somalis still speak Italian for the same reason.)

In the field I’m in now (private security,) any extra language skills will be useful. I speak English and Spanish, some Russian, some Welsh (from grandparents,) some Xhosa (South African,) and little bits of numerous others.

The Welsh is mostly useless today, I’ll admit, haha.

I definitely won’t complain if a millie chick finds me attractive.

I just wouldn’t look forward to all of the fights she’d get me into, drunkenly yelling at everyone “oi me fella’ll do yer wee knees in ya fockun tosser JOG ON!”

Pro musician here.

There are so many, but a hurdy gurdy has gotta be up there. Played by someone who knows more than the basics, it sounds like something a medieval king would demand played to relax.

(They’re also among the most expensive instruments out there, as the only makers today are extremely talented individual ones; no big company like Fender or anything makes them. If you see one, you know it was handmade by a master.)

I also love the sound of the Crwth. It’s from Wales, and is sort of like a regional spinoff/precursor to the violin.

This morning on my way to work. (Rural Ohio here.)

I’ll tell ya a better story. Years ago, my band at the time were on the road, heading to a show around Elkins, West Virginia. We were somewhere in the vicinity of St. Clairsville, OH, when at like 70mph, a giant locust flies in my drummer’s window. We thought it was a hummingbird at first, but the thing is panic-flying around, hitting us in the face, etc. I’m still amazed we didn’t wreck.

Alright, I’m not crazy; I swore there was, in fact, a warrant issued for Bibi by the ICC, which is the correct way to handle this. (Honestly, with that and the warrant for Duterte both out, this is gonna show if the ICC still has any teeth. We need to know if they can still be relied on.)

See, this is something that can’t happen in the USA (yet,) but is easy-peasy in the rest of the world.

Don’t give avowed authoritarians positions of power. Yes, their membership in a hate group can be used to limit their opportunities. You make a choice by joining a recognized hate group, you gotta own it.

……except in the USA, where hate groups are just fine and dandy for governmental spots. (Perhaps encouraged in some cases.)

Yet another thing the rest of the world gets right that we’re sorely behind on.

Was gonna say, they’ve not been given any reason to care about international law.

Although, I swear I saw that the ICC put out a warrant for Bibi.

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Hilariously true. Anyone who puts actual faith in those guys or relies on them for anything is insane. (Or just desperate as fuck, which Russia may be becoming.)

I can’t help but think back to when Musk was threatening to cut off poor, remote areas in South America from Starlink over petty shit. Yall want THAT guy to be your friend? Yikes.

Comments like this are the whole reason I’m here. Got banned from Reddit for talking self-defense against armed people trying to rip your family apart.

I’d like to think realistic discussion is safer here.

Those are the things the Jackass guys got shot with in the first movie. The company called it a “Stingmore” mine.

Way too many people are comfortable with utilizing anything referred to as a “mine” against unarmed civilians.

Careful, hosting a podcast makes one a strong contender for federal law enforcement leadership.

Ex alcoholic and “cirrhosis survivor” here. (I hate that latter term.)

I’m stunned that this situation went down how it did.

I had the full jaundice package when I finally went into the hospital and agreed to detox. I was told I would have to be booze-free for a minimum of six months to be considered for a transplant of any kind; both my liver and kidneys were in concerning shape.

They told me the timeframe for actually being considered was more like two years; there’s basically a board of trustees for each state, they review every case requesting an organ transplant and decide who gets what. (It’s literally a death panel, haha.)

No matter how good I was/am, I would still be at the very lowest priority. They’d have to have available livers as far as the eye can see for me to have a realistic chance. There is no actual chance I would ever get a donor liver, and I don’t want one.

I was dumb. I did it completely to myself. It’s not as simple as “you could’ve quit anytime you wanted,” trying to do that with alcohol is extraordinarily dangerous, BUT I did indeed do this to myself. It would be galactic levels of unethical and immoral for me to be trying to take a donor liver away from ANYONE.

I have since recovered way past the expectations of any medical personnel who worked on me during that time. July 1 will be two years alcohol-free for me.

My point in all of this is that I’m honestly having trouble believing this guy got this transplant at all, let alone so fast.

A, uh, government bearing arms against its citizens….why you ask…?